Connecting with Students Through Play: 5 Games We’ve Used in Our Virtual Youth Programming

The pandemic has put a strain on everyone, but it is especially hard on students. One of the key elements of the success of has been the strong bonds our students build with each other. As we emphasized a while back in our presentation at the , empathy and reinforcing social and emotional connections should be key elements of any youth programming during the lockdown. We have found that integrating games into our curriculum is an effective way to strengthen these bonds while teaching our students along the way. It is , but it has a greater sense of urgency now as we seek out novel ways to connect with our students as they remain socially distant.

During our recent talk, one attendee asked if we could offer some examples of useful games for virtual programs, and this list offers five. All of them have proven fun, engaging, relatively low cost, and (with the exception of one) low effort on your part. We hope they can be handy for your youth programming or inspire you to think of new ways of connecting with your students.

Here are five games we’ve used in our virtual classrooms that can hopefully help you keep your students emotionally together even while they’re physically apart

1. Among Us

Originally released in 2018 by , Among Us has surged in popularity and playership during the pandemic. Between 4-10 people are a crew on a spaceship. However, 1-2 members of the crew are “imposters” who attempt to sabotage the ship and systematically kill off the rest of the crew. The rest of the players attempt to complete simple tasks on the ship and weed out the imposters by discussion and voting. Meanwhile, the imposters attempt to bluff and distract the other players, hopefully convincing the crew to take out some innocent players along the way. Sessions are quick, frenetic, and rely heavily on communication and cooperation between the players. 

All gameplay is done on a computer or mobile device (more likely they’ll be playing on their phones) with chat done in a conferencing platform such as Zoom. You can also host multiple simultaneous game sessions with breakout rooms.

What has been great about playing Among Us with our students is that it is an activity mostly facilitated by the students themselves. Our students organized the play sessions and even introduced play variations, such as “hide and seek” where crew members hide while the imposters try to find them. Chances are they have been playing a lot more of it than you have so give them the chance to run the sessions (just set up a virtual room for them to play) and play along if you feel comfortable. Among Us is free (with ads) on mobile devices and .

2. Werewolf (aka Mafia, aka Secret Hitler, etc., etc.) 

Among Us is a digital adaptation of . It goes by many different names: Mafia, Werewolf, Avalon, and Secret Hitler to name a few. Whatever you call it and whatever you use as the thematic framing device, the game boils down to the same premise: there is an enemy hiding among your group who systematically takes out other members. It is up to the rest of the players to figure out who that enemy is, all the while the enemy tries to keep the other players in the dark while they continue their grim machinations. The game is facilitated by a game master (GM) who walks players through the game’s various phases and crafts a narrative around their decisions. .

One advantage these types of games have over Among Us is Werewolf et. Al. is a scalable game that can handle anywhere from 5 to 100 players, so you could run this game with your entire class. 

Werewolf sessions were a popular feature of our programs even before the pandemic. However, they can be easily adapted to a virtual environment. The GM can secretly assign player roles via direct message. Werewolves can confer among each other through private chat and secretly tell the GM their victim. Votes on who will be sacrificed can be done through creating a poll.

This game can also be done at zero cost. While there are commercial versions, the game requires no pieces, just a way of conveying roles to players (prior to the pandemic, we wrote character roles on index cards and passed them around).

3. Jackbox Games

This is a series of games created by the independent game company J, the makers of the irreverent 90s trivia game . One player hosts a game on their computer or game system through Jackbox’s online servers while the others play on their mobile devices (). The games are simple and social oriented and require little to no prior gaming experience to play. Currently there are seven party packs, each containing four games. The packs range in price from $20-$30 although there are frequent sales on . Most games support up to 8 players and more can participate indirectly through an “audience” feature. 

Some popular Jackbox games among our students include:

: Players get a prompt and try to create the funniest responses. During each round, players see the prompt and two responses, voting on which one they find the funniest.

: Everyone gets a trivia question and has to create an answer that is not correct but is just plausible enough to be true. Players then vote from a list of player and computer generated choices, one of which is the correct answer. Players vote on which one they think is the right answer, earning points if someone votes for their fake answer instead.

: Players create slogans and simple drawings and combine them to create a t-shirt. Players then vote on their favorites. 

Remember to turn the family settings on or else you may get some more adult themed content than you planned for in a classroom setting. 

4. The Oregon Trail

Early in the quarantine, we hosted a session where we played through the classic MECC educational game . Perhaps the most well-known American educational game, the player creates a party of five settlers who travel along the historic Oregon Trail from Independence, MO, to the Oregon Territory’s Willamette Valley. Along the way, they face challenges and mishaps, including injuries, death, and disease. It was the last one with which were interested in teaching. Every time our hapless pioneers encountered a disease, we talked to the students about it, including transmission, symptoms, treatment, and prevention.

The Oregon Trail lends itself well to a “play by committee” playstyle, as we put it up to the students which decisions we made along the trail, conveying their choices through our group chat. It is also easy to get invested in the game’s story when you name your characters and watch them face terrible misfortunes or triumph against all odds. 

You can stream The Oregon Trail through screen-sharing and the game is easily accessible. It’s available for free, along with hundreds of other and games, .

5. Institutionally-Specific Games

If you are creatively inclined, you can also design your own games for your students. These can be a fun and innovative way to teach educational concepts specific to your organization or introduce your students (and perhaps the public as well) to the resources that make your institution unique. 

Examples of games we have developed in house include:

A scavenger hunt utilizing , our online exhibit. We designed this by utilizing the quiz feature on Microsoft Forms.

Escape the Mütter, a Mütter Museum themed virtual room escape we designed through Google Forms (for more advice on how to design your own, ).

We hope these give you some ideas of how to connect with your students even while they remain socially distant. Also, if there are other games you have tried that have been fun and effective during your virtual sessions, feel free to share them in the comments.